Keeping in mind that the CIA a couple of years ago unleashed a worldwide computer worm, which was allegedly designed to infiltrate Iran's nuclear centrifuges (and the mission apparently succeeded), what are the odds that the CIA somehow allowed Iran to get a hold of the drone, with the expectation that Iran would take the drone to its top secret research lab in order to investigate it...thus allowing the CIA's satellites to track the drone right to the lab?

Keeping in mind that the CIA a couple of years ago unleashed a worldwide computer worm, which was allegedly designed to infiltrate Iran's nuclear centrifuges (and the mission apparently succeeded), what are the odds that the CIA somehow allowed Iran to get a hold of the drone, with the expectation that Iran would take the drone to its top secret research lab in order to investigate it...thus allowing the CIA's satellites to track the drone right to the lab?

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Hmm. Before Stuxnet and the recent explosion at the Iranian military facility, I wouldn't give your potential theory any credence.

Now? Maybe.

But, unless we also built some flaws into the drone itself, it would be a big risk to allow it to fall into Iran's hands, knowing they could share it with Russia.

I'm actually surprised they couldn't remotely detonate it in case just such an event occurred. Seems like that would be SOP on any aircraft with classified technology aboard (just like how the SEALS blasted that helicopter in the Bin Laden raid).

I'm actually surprised they couldn't remotely detonate it in case just such an event occurred. Seems like that would be SOP on any aircraft with classified technology aboard (just like how the SEALS blasted that helicopter in the Bin Laden raid).

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According to a report I saw, they are able to wipe the machine's computers clean before it crashes.

The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear sites, according to foreign officials and American experts who have been briefed on the effort.

Until this week, the high-altitude flights from bases in Afghanistan were among the most secret of many intelligence-collection efforts against Iran, and American officials refuse to discuss it. But the crash of the vehicle, which Iranian officials said occurred more than 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan, blew the program’s cover.

The overflights by the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin and first glimpsed on an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2009, are part of an increasingly aggressive intelligence collection program aimed at Iran, current and former officials say. The urgency of the effort has been underscored by a recent public debate in Israel about whether time is running out for a military strike to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.

In a recent speech, President Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, hinted at secret efforts by the United States to keep watch on Iran’s nuclear program.

“We will continue to be vigilant,” Mr. Donilon said last month at the Brookings Institution. “We will work aggressively to detect any new nuclear-related efforts by Iran. We will expose them and force Iran to place them under international inspections.”

Iran said over the weekend that it had recovered the RQ-170, the same drone deployed over Osama bin Laden’s compound before he was killed in May. Senior intelligence officials were disturbed that the drone was publicly discussed in the coverage of the Bin Laden raid, in part because of the fear of exposing its use over Iran.

A statement Sunday from the American-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said Iran might have recovered an “unarmed reconnaissance aircraft” lost while “flying a mission over western Afghanistan.” But several experts noted that the stealth technology of the RQ-170 — which greatly reduces the chances that the drone can be detected by radar — had little use in western Afghanistan, because the Taliban have no radar to detect flights.